


The Perfect Space

by PrettyThief



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Brienne learning to be emotionally brave, Declarations Of Love, F/M, Jaime is a lovestruck vulnerable kitten, New Year's Eve, Secret Relationship, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, do not ask me to introduce you to the plot I do not know her, some found family in here too, vaguely historical only please don't @ me about the history of doorknobs or something, winter at Highgarden
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:54:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28433472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrettyThief/pseuds/PrettyThief
Summary: Jaime and Brienne attempt to conceal their relationship from their friends during the celebration of the new year at Highgarden.They are not very good at it.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 43
Kudos: 134
Collections: JB Festive Festival Exchange 2020





	The Perfect Space

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cardinalgirl75](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cardinalgirl75/gifts).



> For cardinalgirl, who has been lovely to get to know this year.
> 
> Her prompts were: secret lovers, found family, and "snarky Jaime and Brienne who puts up with him anyway." I also know she has a soft spot for historical/regency things, and I was listening to the Bridgerton series on audiobook while thinking about what to write. So, I've tried to incorporate a bit of all of that. I hope you enjoy this, my friend <3
> 
> An enormous thank you to the friends who got me to the finish line with this fic! Specifically waxedpaperdoor for her beta services, for constantly humoring me, and for going easy on me for how vague this vaguely historical AU actually is. And also thank you to slipsthrufingers who has been an exemplary hand-holder and cheerleader in addition to putting together this amazing exchange, which was a pretty chill thing of her to do.
> 
> The title comes from one of my favorite "Jaime Lannister plus banjo" songs, [The Perfect Space](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRFe-4kfJpQ) by The Avett Brothers.

_I wanna have friends  
_ _That I can trust_  
_That love me for the man I've become  
_ _Not the man the man that I was_

Jaime Lannister had only once before visited Highgarden and for Brienne it had been well over a year. He could claim no great love for the Tyrells, and so it surprised him just how much he itched to see the place once more. Or perhaps he only itched to be alone with Brienne again as they had been in Ashemark, and again in the nameless town somewhere along the roseroad.

He had come to Tarth with his boy Peck for Sevenmas with no true intentions—at least that had been what he’d told her father—and some silly part of him had even believed that. Then on the final night of the holiday, Jaime had gifted Brienne a sword of her own inlaid with sapphires and without a word she’d kissed him soundly on the lips. The quick, sweet sensation had felt like awakening from a long, dreamless sleep. After a lifetime away, Jaime had finally awoken to reality. They’d managed to keep some distance and propriety between them under her father’s roof, but the following morning Jaime had found himself packing his belongings onto her carriage and offering to escort Selwyn Tarth’s only daughter to Highgarden for the turn of the new year. _For her safety_ , he’d assured the Evenstar, as if that were something she required. It was only a tiny white lie and Brienne could set him to rights for it later.

His punishment, as it came to be, was a carriage ride fraught with suffering. Jaime’s hand held Brienne’s discreetly between them, occasionally sliding one gloved thumb along the back of hers. Each bump and turn in the road seemed to draw her part way into his lap, though he could not recall any ride before the blooming of their secret romance having unseated her in such a way. He had to bite his lip to keep from grinning each time her leg crossed over his, reminding him entirely too much of tangled sheets and sweat-slick bodies in the preceding nights.

When they at last arrived at Highgarden, well practiced in discretion if not having quite mastered the art, Podrick scrambled down to escort his mistress from the carriage first and then hurried to collect her luggage, leaving Jaime behind with Peck and the Tyrells’ own footman, a young cousin by the look of his soft chestnut curls.

“Would you like a hand, Ser Jaime?” Brienne asked with a smothered smile, nodding toward his poor attempts to carry the majority of his luggage for himself, having waved both boys into the warmth of the house.

“A hand.” He harrumphed. “I cannot believe how you mock me, your own beloved.”

“ _Jaime_ ,” she scolded. “I was not mocking. And you would do well to hush, unless _you_ would like to explain our situation?”

“Oh, I dare not think long of the pains you would suffer if your friends knew you’d aligned yourself with the likes of me.” His tone was all faux annoyance, but he glanced around at where Podrick and the Tyrell boy were toting luggage from the rear of the carriage around the side of the house.

Brienne frowned and even that was soft and warm. A marked contrast from the dour woman he had met some years ago at the height of a brutal war. “They’re your friends too. And I am not ashamed of you, I only would like to ensure my father learns our news from me instead of through idle gossip.” She took a leather handbag that was slipping from under Jaime’s arm, easing his load considerably, and led the way up the freshly swept stone steps to the front door of Highgarden Castle.

Lady Sansa herself stood in the tall arch of the doorway to greet them and when Brienne approached, the shorter woman threw her arms around Brienne’s waist. Jaime set down his bags and marveled from a short distance at Brienne’s face. The crimson of her blush as it crept out past the high neckline of the shirt and pale green waistcoat she wore, washing across her neck and settling high in her ears and in the tip of her nose. It was quite a sight to behold, like a sunset over a still summer lake even in the midst of winter. How he loved her.

“Ser Jaime,” Sansa said, using the less formal of his titles. She turned toward him with a smile that seemed genuine. “It is lovely to see you again, and looking so well.”

“And you, my lady. Although I would argue that it was either improve or die, and our mutual friend was far too stubborn to allow me to choose the latter.” He grinned cheekily at Brienne, who jutted out her chin in that mulish defiance he adored so well.

“Nonsense. I cleaned and bandaged you. The true work was yours alone.”

“Lady Brienne—” Jaime began to protest softly before he was cut off by another voice joining the party in the hall.

“If you’ve all finished congratulating yourselves on my brother’s fine health,” Tyrion Lannister’s voice drawled from over Jaime’s shoulder.

“Tyrion,” Sansa said with a scolding laugh.

Jaime recalled the last time he’d seen the pair of them in a room together, though the memory was hazy and he sometimes wondered how much of it had been hallucination. The pretty Stark daughter and the second Lannister son had been betrothed at the time and Jaime had still been dosed heavily with milk of the poppy. They’d been ready to come to blows, then, if Sansa and Brienne had let anything happen to Tyrion’s big brother.

Now here they all were.

In Highgarden.

To celebrate the new year.

Sansa had instead wed the pensive and bookish Willas Tyrell not long after old General Mace Tyrell had taken a bullet leading his men from the rear. It had been there that Tyrion had met and inexplicably impressed Margaery Tyrell. Jaime had attended Lady Sansa’s wedding with Brienne the previous summer and while there was no reason at all to believe that they could be a love match, they seemed like they could be fine friends and good partners. At the time, he’d wondered what more a person could ask for on their wedding day. He hadn’t known then that he _could_ ask for more. That the person who would one day give him everything had been sitting next to him.

Jaime cleared his throat and gave Brienne a pointed look. “Might I have a word, my lady? It has been a long few days of travel. Perhaps in the—” he craned his head to peer down the hall, searching for a room that could reasonably be empty before realizing that he did not, in fact, know his way around Highgarden in the slightest, “—in the gardens?”

Brienne scoffed and every pair of eyes in the group swiveled toward Jaime. “We’ve not even been shown to our rooms, Ser Jaime. We mustn’t be rude.”

“Nonsense!” Sansa interjected, laying a hand upon her friend’s arm insistently. “We shall see to it that all of your belongings find their place. Go, stretch your legs.”

The two women shared a meaningful look in an unspoken language that Jaime could not understand before Brienne joined him in traversing toward the gardens. A pair of double-paned glass doors stood at the end and Jaime pushed them open with his hand and elbow to reveal a stone courtyard that led out onto the most expansive garden Jaime had ever seen. Even at the height of winter, the grounds were a sight to behold.

Beyond the courtyard, a wide cobblestone walkway lined with evergreen shrubbery led out toward an icy maze of hibernating rose bushes. Jaime could picture them in the spring, alive and reaching toward the sun in every color imaginable. Beyond the bushes, rows of trees dotted with the vibrant red of snowbirds perched in their branches led out toward a gently sloping hill covered in the same thin layer of crunchy snow and frost as they had arrived in. At the furthest perimeter of the property, a half-frozen lake harbored a dozen or so geese. The reds and whites and earthy brown and the way they all came together to create Highgarden in winter was something Jaime had seen before in paintings, had heard described in tales, but the beauty of the place was more striking that he had been prepared for when he’d agreed to join Brienne on holiday.

He glanced at her sidelong and could easily recognize the look of wonder he was feeling reflected on Brienne’s face. Her mouth was slightly agape, her hand suspended halfway to her face and the only blue that Jaime could see shone from her eyes. He could think of nothing he wanted more than to drink in her wonder, to taste the awe on her lips. Jaime knew Brienne’s features were not pretty. She could never be accused of possessing a delicate face or body. But surely no one had ever appreciated beauty the way Brienne Tarth appreciated beauty. And that was better, Jaime thought. That was so much more.

Without a word, he took her hand and led her away from the door to what would be the western wing of the house. They fell into place with a shoulder each pressed against the cold stone and Jaime tipped up to kiss her more softly than he’d intended when he’d brought her here. He pulled away to flutter smaller kisses to the corners of her mouth and along the solid angles of jaw.

Brienne’s hand gripped the thickness of his wrist and Jaime pressed his nose into the exposed crook of her neck to nuzzle at the soft skin there, inhaling the salty scent of her.

“What are you doing?” she asked, breathless, but she tilted her head toward her other shoulder, granting him better access.

Jaime grinned and scraped his teeth across her shoulder. He worked his way back up the long line of her neck with kisses punctuated by steaming breaths that escaped into the cool air around them, Brienne’s glistening gooseflesh the only evidence left behind of them at all. She hummed low in her throat, something desperately close to a moan that Jaime found very intriguing indeed. He replaced his lips with his tongue, pressing it flat against her rapidly pounding pulse point, drinking in her excitement.

“Sansa suspects,” Brienne murmured.

Jaime leaned up to nip her earlobe and slid his fingers around the curve of her hip. “I’m sure she doesn’t.”

“The way she _looked_ between us—”

“Lady Sansa wouldn’t dream you’d settle for an old knave such as me.”

“Jaime.” What Brienne had meant to be a firm, chastising tone instead came out breathy and yearning.

Still, Jaime felt her tense under his grip and so he leaned away from her and dropped his hand, quirking an eyebrow. Before he could put words to the question, however, the sound of the door opening and the _whoop!_ Of a man audibly shivering filled the still winter air and Brienne leapt away from him.

Jaime shoved his hands in his pockets, pulling the fabric deliberately away from his thighs.

“Oh, Lannister!” Renly Baratheon came trotting down the steps like a fine horse at dressage, his face lit into a smile although Jaime could not fathom why. It was hardly like he’d ever been friends with his erstwhile goodbrother even if he and Brienne had to drag his arse from behind enemy lines just a few short years prior. “What are the pair of you doing out here, sword fighting again?”

He said it with a laugh, as though the idea of Brienne, a woman, or Jaime, a man with one hand, with swords in their hands amused him. Jaime resisted the urge to clench his jaw and instead grinned lazily.

“Only plotting how to upstage your absolutely captivating holiday tales of who wore what to the Baratheon Sevenmas feasts.”

Renly put his hands on his hips and shot Jaime a wry look, but it quickly faded into a knowing smirk and he took several languid steps toward them. “Have you dumped the blades into the bushes, then?”

Jaime shifted his gaze deliberately toward Brienne, allowing her to take the lead. This would be her truth to tell, they had decided. “Boxing!” she said abruptly, the word ringing high in the crisp late morning air.

“Oh.” If Renly was surprised, his bearded face did not betray it. “You know I boxed at school.” He jabbed at the air, a snappy one-two-one-two.

“Lieutenant Tyrell was quite the champion, I understand,” Brienne said with a smile while Jaime looked carefully between the two of them; Loras Tyrell had died in battle defending Renly himself. It seemed quite a risky move on Brienne’s part, to bring up the person everyone knew to be the man’s dead lover. But Lord Baratheon of Storm’s End was one of Brienne’s oldest and dearest friends. The Lannisters and Baratheons had intermingled and intermarried for generations, and Jaime was not as unfamiliar with the man as he might have preferred to be. If Brienne trusted him and Renly trusted Brienne, then Jaime would happily fall in line behind her.

“He was.” Renly raised his head like the proud, defiant stag his house had made into their sigil. Then he tugged stiffly at the hem of his waistcoat and cleared his throat. “We’d all best be getting indoors at any rate. The Lady of Highgarden wishes to gather all of her revellers for a toast to new beginnings.” His dark blue eyes lingered on Brienne before flicking toward Jaime.

Brienne’s face brightened and Jaime couldn’t help but try to catch some of the glow. He smiled to himself a little as they meandered in toward the parlor. Brienne was happy to be with him. Jaime did not doubt that now. But something else, something gentle and safe, shone from her when Brienne was with her friends. For so long she had had none. Jaime had met her during the worst time of their lives, and since then he had watched with growing delight from her side as she had learned how to accept the love of a house full of people.

While they waited, Jaime linked his arm through Brienne’s just as they had done dozens of times before. On this occasion, he still longed to be closer to her, but he could feel her leaning into him just so slightly, too, and it made his heart pound a fervent drumbeat inside his chest.

He did manage to break away and stand apart from her during Sansa’s toast. All throughout the night-before feast, he even resisted the itch in his palms to cover her hand with his own. They bid one another good night in the hall outside of her room and it was just quiet enough for Jaime to chance a quick kiss, his fingers smoothing through the hair at her temples and down her neck.

“Are you _quite_ certain that you must have your father know first?”

“Quite,” she affirmed, but she kissed the tip of his nose and Jaime grinned so wide he was certain that his cheeks would still ache the following day. “There’s no urgency. We’ll have the rest of our lives. A sennight won’t be the death of you.”

“It could be.”

“You’ve survived worse.”

“I promise you I have not.” His smile softened and he traced the line of her cheekbone with his thumb. “Good night, Brienne.”

She kissed his lips this time, soft and sweet and sure of herself. “Good night, Jaime.”

The following morning at dawn, Jaime crept down the grand staircase and into the parlor to find Brienne already sitting with Lady Sansa and Lord Willas. He’d awoken early in the hopes of tempting Brienne with a stroll through the grounds. Indeed, when he approached, he appreciated that she was already settled in a pair of breeches and tall boots as though she’d read his mind.

“My lord,” Jaime said as he approached, offering the eldest Tyrell a slight bow. “My lady.”

“Ser Jaime,” Sansa said with a fondness that still caught him off guard. Her parents would surely be spinning in their graves. “Brienne was just telling us the two of you planned to venture into the grounds today, if the cold hasn’t worsened.”

“Did she? She must be speaking for herself. I’ve never minded the cold. Soldier’s fortitude.” Jaime took the tea that was offered him from a serving boy, catching Brienne’s eye from the sofa opposite the one he sat upon. He recalled his reluctance to slip from between the blankets just moments earlier when he had awoken in his chilly guest room. From the way her blue eyes twinkled over her own cup, he knew she must be thinking of similar cool mornings when they had barely been friends and he’d been particularly petulant.

Jaime didn’t register just how long their eyes remained on one another until Podrick, who he had not noticed when he’d entered the parlor, cleared his throat. When he did tear his gaze from Brienne’s, he caught the lad’s big brown eyes intently upon him.

“Will you be staying to break your fast this m-morning, my lady? Ser?” He glanced quickly between the pair of them as though they might both disappear before he could get the words out.

Brienne sighed. “We thought we might pick over whatever is left when we return. The sun over the lake this time of day is quite lovely. Ser Jaime has never seen it, and I should like to show him while we have the opportunity.”

“What are we showing my brother now and what makes any of you think he’ll appreciate it?”

Jaime swallowed a groan and half-turned in his seat to meet his brother’s sullen stare. Their relationship had been strained for some time, but they had moved toward some sort of peaceful understanding that would likely never be what they had once had. Jaime had made quite a lot of progress, at least, in his efforts to ignore Tyrion’s barbed pleasantries.

The shorter man hopped onto the sofa next to Brienne, folded his hands into his lap, and peered up at her. Jaime stood before his brother could say anything more.

“The lake,” he said by way of belated reply. “Lady Brienne had planned a walk to the lake and I wished to accompany her.”

“Well in that case, you can wait for me. If you’ll believe it, I’ve never been down to see the thing for myself, though I hear from Margaery it’s enormous. I think I’d like to picture myself sailing across it, away from Westeros to some island in the south where everyone’s tits are on full display.”

Jaime winced and set down his tea, wondering with some embarrassment what Margaery might think to hear her husband speak in such a way—though perhaps she didn’t mind; not every woman was Brienne. Before he could respond, however, Pod cut him off again.

“It’s something of a walk, Lord Tyrion, are you certain? And—and they p-planned to leave before breakfast.”

“Oh, now there’s a truly foul prospect,” Tyrion mirrored Jaime’s expression of revulsion as though the two situations were at all comparable. “And I suppose you could not be persuaded to postpone until after we’ve all eaten?”

Jaime sought out Brienne's eyes to find a smile in them. She smiled so often lately. "I think we cannot. You would be welcome to join should we venture out again, though it is rather cold out."

 _Rather cold_ , and Jaime had no intention of disentangling himself from Brienne for at least an hour. Especially not after she'd mentioned a cozy little lake house; Jaime's thoughts had been occupied with all the different ways they might take full advantage of every surface.

"Ser Jaime, if you've finished your tea?"

Jaime jumped up so quickly that his teacup nearly toppled over, sending splashes of warm liquid over the edges to pool onto the saucer. Bollocks, but he was eager.

"Er, yes."

"Then I'll fetch our coats!" Podrick piped up, striding across the length of the parlor.

"But you're not coming," Brienne said before Jaime could, and he swallowed a grin. She'd come a long way in such a short time. It thrilled him to know she wanted him as much as he wanted her, even if she could still be occasionally so shy about it.

"Oh but I am. Missing breakfast does not bother me m-much. Not when my lady's honor is on the line." He inclined his young head seriously. The half-grown war orphan had at some point become Brienne's ward, though Jaime thought that at times it seemed that Podrick was just as preoccupied with protecting Brienne as she was with protecting him. It was a compulsion Jaime could relate to well.

"I daresay there's no one more honorable than Brienne," Sansa said on a breathy laugh and her husband smiled in agreement. "And Ser Jaime… Well, I'm certain he would not let any harm come to her or her reputation. There’s no one here untrustworthy."

Jaime fidgeted with the cufflinks of his frock coat, uncomfortable still with Stark praise and knowing very well that he was undeserving of it in this instance. Nothing he wanted to do with Brienne was _wrong_ , and he would not feel shame for it. He was determined that she would not either. But hiding from their friends put him ill at ease.

"Ser Jaime _is_ very gallant," Podrick said as he went to fetch his coat and hat. "He certainly wouldn't mind if I followed along."

Jaime glanced back to Brienne, eyebrows raised. She seemed to find the entire ordeal humorous, the pitiless woman.

In the end, Podrick did come along, and Jaime had to suppress an actual whine when they passed the lake house. It did not escape his notice, however, the way Brienne's eyes drifted longingly toward it as well. Eventually, however, Podrick had drifted ahead—and perhaps even deliberately so, Jaime had thought with some suspicion—and Brienne had surprised Jaime by pulling him behind an old hunting blind and kissing him senseless. Jaime had fumbled open the buttons of her breeches to dip his hand beneath the waistband and stroke confidently at the wet, hot juncture between her legs until she was gasping his name and he was grinning like the lovestruck fool he was. And it _was_ foolish, how long they’d waited to confess these feelings they could not seem to keep contained within them now that they had been brought to the surface. The _years_ they had lost, when they could have had _this_ for so long…

But they had one another now.

She was his and he was hers.

The last day of the year passed in dancing and food and laughter that even Jaime found enjoyment in. By the end of the night, though, he had sat himself by the ornate fireplace with a glass of brandy. Brienne was across the room with the Tyrells, Sansa, and Renly. Peck and Pod had their heads bowed seriously over a game of Cyvasse. Brienne had insisted since they had agreed that he could accompany her to Highgarden that these were his friends too. That through the course of the war and the subsequent rebuilding, each of them had come to love Jaime and respect him just as Brienne did.

It was an odd turn of events, when Brienne had always been the shyer of the two of them, the more easily tongue-tied. Jaime could hold a conversation with anyone at the drop of a hat, but Brienne’s ability to slowly and gradually form deep connections had proven to be the better, more meaningful skill in the long run. She was surrounded by happiness and light and the sight of her basking in it now filled Jaime with a warmth such as no drink or fireplace could ever hope to bring him.

As he thought, Jaime slid his thumb around his bare third left finger and imagined what it might be like to wear a ring upon it in full view of everyone they knew. He had few memories of his mother, but he thought he could remember the tender look upon her face when she would look at her wedding band. It was not customary for men, but Jaime thought it might be something that he would like. That, and to be able to sit beside Brienne with his hand upon her knee and her head on his shoulder while they shared a laugh. Perhaps he would even let him kiss her once in a while, when the conversation had drifted away from them and no one was paying them much mind. He would hide with her for now, if that was what she needed. Jaime would give her anything she asked of him. He knew she would never ask for anything that was not worthy. And perhaps it was selfish of him, but he would like to claim her, too.

Tyrion wandered into his field of vision and Jaime straightened stiffly in his chair, blinking several times to clear the image of Brienne from his eyes. He took a long pull from his drink before setting the half-empty glass down on the marble table beside him.

“Father would have hated this, don’t you think?” Tyrion said as he settled into the chair across from Jaime, an assessing look on his face.

Jaime’s returned gaze was wry. “With you wed to a Tyrell? I hardly think he would complain.”

“Think of the lack of Lannister traditions, brother! No lavish family banquet while the mines dried up and the people of the Westerlands starved. No pressure that ‘ _this year, you will wed. Both of you_.’ He’ll be spinning a waltz in his grave if he could see our lack of deference now.”

Jaime chuckled. “You overestimate his fondness for dancing. Even in his grave Tywin Lannister wouldn’t be given to anything that could be misconstrued as frivolity or … _happiness_.”

Tyrion was giving him a queer look, a crooked sort of smile that was almost _soft_. The laughter of the others sprawled across the sofas and chairs behind them washed over Jaime and for just a moment he felt as if he might be somewhere he could belong, even if his place would only ever be on the fringes.

“You speak of happiness like it’s something you know of. In fact—” Tyron took a golden case from his breast pocket and removed a fragrant cigar from within, “—I’d say you seem happier than I’ve ever seen you, and I daresay I’ve known you better and longer than anyone here.”

 _Definitely not **better**_ , Jaime immediately wanted to argue, but he’d long ago learned not to strike up arguments with his brother. Still, he wasn’t sure Tyrion had _ever_ truly known him. “In a manner of speaking.”

“In every manner!” Tyrion laughed around the unlit cigar on his lip then leaned forward conspiratorially. “Have you told the lady how you feel or will that secret die with you and your stubbornness?”

Jaime tipped the brandy against his lips and drank slowly, trying and failing to taste the smoky hint of cherries that Willas had assured him made the drink superior. The drink burned, but he supposed it did burn sweet.

“She has an idea,” he said at length. His words were directed to his brother, but his eyes were again on Brienne. Her smile was shy and her hands a little animated as she explained something to Willas and Sansa, both of whom were listening with focused interest.

“And I don’t suppose you’ve any designs to tell her the full truth of it?”

Brienne’s eyes slid toward him then and the tight shyness of her smile eased some into recognizable affection. Jaime felt his own lips curve upward without permission from his mind. He was always aware of her, always responding to her presence like a desperate summer field responded to sudden rains.

"I've been trying to find the words, but I don't think I know them. I've read all the books and seen all the plays and heard all the poetry but none of it comes close to the actual thing."

Jaime could hear Tyrion saying something he no doubt thought was clever, some remark about the hopeless look on his face. But Brienne was smiling at him, sucking the corner of her bottom lip between her teeth, and at once nothing else mattered.

"Enjoy the rest of your evening, brother," Jaime said without really hearing himself.

"You can't bring in the new year _sulking,_ Jaime. At least stay and finish the damn brandy." It was the first time in too long that they had had a civil conversation, and while that was important to Jaime, the way Brienne was looking at him took far greater precedence.

He waved absently toward Tyrion and backed out of the room into the dimly lit corridor on the nearest end of the ballroom. In daylight, the hallway was a light and cheery place wallpapered in minty green but in the darkness at the height of winter, shadows flickered in the firelight from wrought iron sconces fashioned into the long stems of roses. Jaime pressed a shoulder up against a wall and allowed himself to melt into the shadows. He watched as Brienne attempted to wrap up her conversation with their friends, but Margaery and Renly kept pulling her back in. She moved further and further to the edge of her seat, kept tucking her escaped tendrils of blonde hair behind her ear and biting her lip. A warm bloom of pride coursed through Jaime's veins; Brienne was so anxious to get to him. _Him_.

After what seemed a lifetime she said her farewells and skirted away from the merriment. Her eyes met Jaime's and with a grin he backed quickly and quietly away from her, beckoning for Brienne to follow.

Her eyes were ablaze in the candlelight as she stalked toward him down the hall, a look of pure, delightful consternation writ clearly across her features. Each of her freckles seemed to glow like the golden brown specks of molten sugar atop holiday pudding and Jaime nearly stumbled backward with the overwhelming urge to lick each and every one of them.

In wider company, Jaime might have feared more for his lady’s reputation. But here at Highgarden, in the aftermath of the war, in the presence of their friends, he had to admit that he did not feel as though he needed to worry. They seemed to even want to _encourage_ their behavior. Brienne seemed to fit well into Highgarden’s vast, open spaces, and though Jaime was not convinced that these were the spaces he could thrive in, he could stand by her as she learned how to blossom no matter where they went. These people trusted and respected her. They loved her. That was enough to earn at least a modicum of Jaime’s own respect and trust, at least where she was concerned. And so he carried on backward into darker and darker recesses of the house until he had nowhere else to run from her.

Jaime’s hand fumbled upon a set of double doors behind him and with a wide grin he swung it open, following it clumsily inside. The library. His nose filled with scents of old leather and even older books and the faint smoke of dying embers in an ornate fireplace. He halted his backward retreat only when his thighs collided against the high back of a green velvet chaise. The lingering effects of the brandy left his head pleasantly clouded and warm and he grinned at Brienne through it.

She’d changed for the evening into the festive blue dress Jaime had gifted her on the fourth night of Sevenmas the week prior. Brienne had been a battlefield nurse by name and trade, but when Jaime had lost his hand, she had taken up a blade to defend him and the rest of their misfit party with more skill than any soldier he had ever come across. Standing before him now with her spine as straight as a finely crafted sword, her dress hugging the slight inward slope of her waist and and the gentle curve of her breast, Jaime was certain he’d never seen anything more glorious. Nothing more perfect to his eye.

They had had one another twice before—for the first time in Ashemark, when promises had been whispered in the quiet stillness that fell between the last night of Sevenmas and the new year; for the second time in a no-name village under the roof of a tiny inn after they’d made good on those promises. But Jaime had spent _years_ trying not to touch her, reminding himself that she could only ever be his friend. Having to stay away from her the last two days—knowing with absolute certainty now that she wanted him as badly as he wanted her and yet they were so far apart—had Jaime burning up from the inside out.

“Lord Lannister,” she whispered, moving toward him with all of the grace no one would have guessed she might possess. Her hips were so close to his that he could feel the warmth of her from where they stood and he sat down against the back of the chaise heavily with a giddy puff of laughter that sounded nothing like the battlefield commander he had been at all.

Brienne smiled, and though they had been touching one another at every opportunity for days now, it was the most confident he had seen her with him yet. Her fingers, sturdy and sure as the rest of her, ghosted across his cravat—tied in a ridiculously complicated pattern of knots that Jaime had thought would be funny when Peck had helped him dress for the evening. She slid her hand from one end of the cravat to the other, grazing across the smooth skin at his neck as she went along. Jaime swallowed hard at the sensation but his eyes were fixed on hers.

She loosened one loop in the knot and then another and another. _Gods,_ he’d thought himself terribly clever. Jaime Lannister, the height of fashion again as he hadn’t been in years. He had snorted at his reflection wearing the craftily woven cravat. There was nothing at all humorous about _this_. Brienne’s fingertips slipped deftly into the loops of each knot, tugging each one free. Her knuckles grazed against the thin fabric of his shirt, an incidental caress of his sternum and sending blood rushing to his cock with each movement. She jerked him toward her on the last knot, the ribbons twisted between her fingers.

“Brienne—” he just had time to gasp before her lips were on his, hungry and hot and in control of him. He tried to grip the back of the chaise with both hands, but forgetting for a moment that he had only the one, nearly lost his balance and slipped on the polished wooden floor. Brienne pushed herself the rest of the way between his knees and caught him around the waist, steadying him.

“Has the brandy gone to your head, my lord? Do you need to lie down?”

Father’s beard, she was _smirking_ at him.

Jaime had never been a good man. His life had been plagued by loyalty to the wrong people at the wrong time. There were many secrets he had kept locked away from even himself, but bad luck in loyalty and the things he’d done in the name of it had never been among those secrets. If he had any good fortune left to him, Jaime would have many more years ahead of him to ponder what he had done to deserve this night, to deserve this woman and the way she was looking at him just now. He was not actually drunk on drink, but the thought of it did make his head spin.

“I think I’d better. Perhaps you could help this old man to bed.” He grinned slyly in that way he knew she liked but pretended she didn’t. The smile that would make her roll her eyes even as little pink spots of blush would rise in the apples of her cheeks.

She did just that, blue eyes reaching up toward the ceiling as her smirk threatened to turn into a true smile, and Jaime could not resist her any longer. He surged forward from the chaise and, cupping the back of her neck, took her smile between his lips. She made a noise between surprise and desire against his mouth and Jaime ground his pelvis against her, so close to where he wanted to be, so much damned fabric between them.

Brienne guided them around the chaise as Jaime kissed her, feeling her way through the dark without breaking contact or loosening the bruising grip she held against his hip with her other hand. A stack of books on the side table clattered to the ground and she paused to mumble an apology to thin air—or perhaps to the books themselves—and Jaime’s affection for her bubbled out of him in the sound of his barely-stifled laugh. She was sweet, his Brienne. He wondered idly if he sat behind a desk from dawn until dusk how many adjectives he could come up with to describe her. How many she would believe if he told her. How long it would take him to convince her. All the ways that he could try.

He could start here, he realized, stilling their progress and touching his forehead to hers. He had begun this adventure to the library with the intent to lie down with her in front of the fire and fuck her until the first dawn of the new year rose across the wintry horizon, but there was time. There was so much time that he had never been able to believe he would have when he’d been delirious with fever and she’d commanded him to _live_. She was still commanding him, still breathing life into him here and now with the heat of her lips and the press of her hips.

Jaime reached his hand up to frame her face, his thumb stroking gently. Brienne’s face was a little confused but expectant, hopeful. He could see now what he couldn’t for so long, how well she loved him. She wore it so plainly, how had he not seen it—

“I love you.”

He’d never said the words quite in that order before now.

Brienne’s blush—a happy pink—was accentuated by the glow of dwindling firelight, but it was nothing to the burning hope in her eyes. She wasn’t shy or nervous or overcome with lust. Not in that moment. She loved him. His secret love, his secret wife.

“Jaime,” she breathed in response. She smiled, wide and unabashed and without a shred of doubt that he meant what he said. Her fingers brushed his temple, a gentle unspoken promise he had to close his eyes against lest she worry herself over the tears that had welled in them. “Husband.” And then she was kissing him again and tugging him down onto the chaise.

Jaime had not planned to make love to her so slowly and sweetly in the Highgarden library, languid and smiling and rolling clumsily from the chaise to the woven rug by the fireplace and back again. That seemed to be the pattern, though: the exchange of their vows in a rundown sept in the sleepy village between Ashemark and Highgarden—witnessed only by a bleary-eyed Peck and a tired septon who had plainly preferred not to have been awoken from his sleep—had not been in any of their plans either.

Jaime could not think of a single complaint, though, as he lay curled tightly around Brienne on the too-small chaise. They had redressed only to the bare minimum. Jaime had his knee wedged between her thighs and Brienne trailed her fingertips lightly across the exposed skin of his forearm where he’d rolled his sleeves up to the elbows.

“I would very much like to tell my father he can stop trying to marry me off now,” she said into the quiet. “It wouldn’t be much trouble for you if we return to Tarth at dawn?”

Jaime hummed thoughtfully. “That wouldn’t allow much time for what I’d planned to do with you in every room of this house.”

“Highgarden has twenty-three rooms, Jaime.”

“Thirty-four if you count the greenhouses and kitchens. And I would like to believe we could make better use of this library if we put our imaginations to use.”

“You’re incorrigible.”

“What does that speak of about you, I wonder, that you so clearly enjoy me?” He nudged the back of her neck with his nose and she twisted in his arms awkwardly until she was facing him. The limited space had them so close together he could feel her breath against his cheek, could see every multicolored speck of blue in her eyes.

She sighed dramatically. “I suppose it would say that I love you. More than I can put into words.”

“Then we’ll have to find other ways for you to say it,” he said very seriously before tangling his hand with hers and tilting his head up to kiss her.

Jaime barely had time to slip his tongue against Brienne’s when the door opened with a crash. Neither of them pulled away immediately this time. _Let them know_ , they seemed to have resolved together without saying it aloud.

“My lord! My lady!”

They did break away then. Podrick.

“I understand that I must be interrupting m-marital duties, but Lord Tyrion demanded I find you at once. The clocks will be striking m-midnight soon.”

“I did not breathe a word!” Jaime sat up at the sound of Peck’s voice and Brienne followed suit, straightening the neckline of her dress. “I swear, I didn’t tell him!”

“Calm down, both of you,” she said, and Jaime noticed that she did not look embarrassed at all. Not of him. Not in front of these two. A ward and a valet, Jaime and Brienne called them, but there was no one either of them trusted more.

“ _Lord Tyrion_ can bring in the new year with his Tyrell family,” Jaime said, a little crossly. He scrubbed his hand across his face and sighed, narrowing his eyes at the fidgety young men. “Come here, you two. We procured a bottle of whiskey a bit ago. We’ll have our own celebration and _you_ —” he pointed a finger at Podrick, whose eyes went wide, “—can tell us who’s been filling your head with this talk of ‘marital duties.’”

Brienne elbowed him in the ribcage and Jaime grinned while the pair shuffled inside, the older lad giving Pod a meaningful look that suggested he had better _not_ tell anyone who’d been filling his head with anything.

The boys settled down on the woven rug in front of the chaise, Jaime and Brienne sat as close as they pleased with their hands intertwined. Jaime poured them each a sip of liquor while, at the insistence of all present, Brienne retold the story of the occasion she’d fought off seven men all on her own. When the clock above the mantle struck midnight, Jaime pressed his lips to Brienne’s, and when he pulled away he found that the boys were smiling and so was she. He kissed her again for good measure.

It wasn’t Tywin Lannister’s family tradition. It was not what the Tyrells had invited them there for. These people were not his family by blood. They were not every friend he had ever made. But these were his people. His family, if he had any say in the matter. It had taken him long enough to realize what Brienne meant, but he finally understood.

There was nowhere else Jaime would rather be than wherever they were.


End file.
